Matthew Wayne Selznick

Well, this one was particularly bizarre and vivid.

It started with my old friend Roger and I showing up at a house apparently shared by greenplaid and a young Demi Moore. For whatever reason, we were there the night before a trip to Disneyland. Roger and I were supposed to sleep in the kitchen, which of course, being a dream, did not seem all that unusual.

When the Disney portion of the dream came around, Roger was replaced by jane_grey and an unidentified friend of greenplaid. But this was not really Disneyland, this was like, UrbanBlightLand — if Main Street USA was replaced by, say, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in downtown Long Beach (was it Chris Rock who pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr. street in any major city was guaranteed to be in the ghetto?)

We were quickly engaged in a staged but very convincing and realistic morality play involving a black man, a young, poor Korean man, and some upscale occupants of a limousine who seemed to be instruments of some dark force. The black guy and the Korean guy made all the right choices, with some help from us, and even avoided a conflict with each other.

Leaving this tableau, the four of us then encountered an all-girl street gang, but these ladies were done up a la the Pat Benatar “Love Is A Battlefield” video. They started shakin’ their stuff in that West Side Story, Flashdancey style of gang display… so I responded by shouting, “We are young…!” The funny thing was, by this time the four of us were just being goofy — we were a little shaken by the realism and potential danger of the last “show,” and we were determined not to be threatened by these painted hoodlums.

The four of us each sang a verse of the song, one after the other, tongues firmly in cheeks. The video vixens could not prevail.

For some reason, halfway through “Love Is A Battlefield,” it became the Styx song “Blue Collar Man.” I can only attribute this to having recently heard a sad, pitiful, revival house version of Styx performing live on the radio a few nights back. In any event, we found our way out of the park through some service exit, laughing, and that was the end of the dream.

We were at Disneyland today… we rode some rides we’ve never ridden (or at least I don’t remember riding), mostly kiddie stuff, we wandered around, and I got to watch the crows.

I think the crows are my favorite thing about Disneyland. There are an awful lot of them there, and they’re such big, beautiful, intelligent birds — social creatures, you know, but not to the extent of their larger cousins the ravens.

Once, years back, I saw at Disneyland a murder of crows so large, they would have succeeded at murder had they set their minds to it. I mean, well over a hundred of the birds, gathered in an empty corner of the parking lot, as well as all over the air above. It was an awesome sight, and sound!

Today, they were rambunctious, probably due to the impending storm. Great fun to watch.

The storm didn’t really hit until we were on the way home… and then, at about 10:45 up here in the High Desert, it started to snow. My wife pulled me out of the shower with an ecstatic announcement: “It’s snowing, hurry up, come on!”

It’s been a couple of years since it snowed at my town’s elevation, and never since we’ve lived here. We took pictures. We threw snowballs at each other. We let the dog wander around, then took pictures of the snow on his black back, just cuz.

I took pictures of the front and back yard, the white rooftops, the trees. We took pictures of each other with snow in our hair. My wife gathered snow in containers to preserve in the freezer.

Here’s something I didn’t know: snow interferes with satellite reception. Knocks it out, in fact. I’m not sure if that’s the snow on the dish, or just the extra stuff in the air, acting like chaff in the way of the signal.

It stopped for a little while, then it hailed, lightly, now it’s snowing harder than ever. Very cool.

I can now add snow to my list of weather experiences up here: Dust storm, fire storm, snow storm!

Heee hee!